Yearly Archives: 2003

I Cry

I came home yes­ter­day with a note on my desk, and it said that Dolly was being tak­en for a walk.

My first reac­tion was dis­be­lief. I could­n’t under­stand how some­one could just take my cat for a walk. I was beside myself with shock. I felt vio­lat­ed. I felt insult­ed. I felt ter­ri­ble.

I had­n’t walked Dolly yet, for sev­er­al rea­sons. First of all, I did­n’t have her microchipped, so any chance that she gets away would be dev­as­tat­ing. Secondly, I had­n’t decid­ed whether I should take her out yet, since she might miss being out­side too much after her first time. That was a big deci­sion for me, one that I had­n’t made yet, but one which was made for me.

The most impor­tant point is that Dolly had her first walk with­out me. I was­n’t there to see how she reacts with the world, I was­n’t able to be the first per­son to let her out­side.

I stood in my room for ten min­utes in dis­be­lief. I could­n’t even wrap my head around how some­one could do such a thing, to walk into my home and vio­late my feel­ings in such a way. I put on my head­phones, put on my fuck off playlist, and sat under my desk, shak­ing my head. This was the most offen­sive thing any­one has ever done to me in my life.

When the real­iza­tion that there was no oth­er first walk sunk in, I start­ed to sob. The shock segued into depres­sion, and I slumped onto the ground, pulling my hair, still in dis­be­lief. I cried for a good while, some­thing I haven’t done for eight or nine years. I cried so hard that my tear ducts felt like they were being sucked of their flu­ids and the walls were start­ing to touch each oth­er. By the end of it, my eyes had the old famil­iar swollen feel­ing, and I was exhaust­ed. I show­ered and tried to wash the mucus from my hair.

The whole sit­u­a­tion has made me more ful­ly under­stand how much I care about Dolly. I already knew how much I cared about her, and I appre­ci­at­ed her before, but I nev­er real­ized the extent of it until now. I don’t see her as a pet. I see her as a child.

It’s also made me think about the nature of good and bad, and how much of a bal­ance there is. I nev­er real­ly believed that either exist­ed, since one bad thing gen­er­al­ly spawns a good thing, such as mur­der help­ing to con­trol over­pop­u­la­tion, or geno­cide lead­ing to beau­ti­ful art/culture. Of course, I’ve nev­er been through either, so my thoughts are quite lim­it­ed.

I just can’t see the good in this sit­u­a­tion. I can’t see how this can be any­thing but bad. I haven’t learned any­thing from this, one of the only pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for it hap­pen­ing, and I have lost even more faith in human­i­ty.

Seeing the good in this would be healthy for me.

Honours Project, Wind Waker

I’ve been get­ting a decent amount of work done late­ly. I’m pret­ty much fin­ished my graph­ics project, a week ahead of sched­ule, and it looks pret­ty sweet. I haven’t had enough progress on my hon­ours project yet, since my super­vi­sor isn’t very good at giv­ing direc­tions. I’m pret­ty wor­ried about my pre­sen­ta­tion for it next week. It’s sup­posed to be 15–20 min­utes long, and I feel like I only have 10 min­utes worth of mate­r­i­al, but more impor­tant­ly, that I’ve exhaust­ed all aspects of the sub­ject. The essay is sup­posed to be 20 pages sin­gle spaced, but I can’t see that hap­pen­ing with the amount of infor­ma­tion out there on Rubik’s cubes.

The Wind Waker comes out tom­morow at 9:30 am, and I’ll be pick­ing it up before meet­ing with my super­vi­sor tomor­row. I’ll be try­ing it out for the first time in the pres­ence of Trolley and Wheaties, and pos­si­bly Aaron and Dina, dur­ing the night. We’ll be pick­ing up some alco­hol, and I’ll be stay­ing the night there. Trolley has a car, so he’ll be able to pick me up, and dri­ve Dolores to his place as well. It will be inter­est­ing to see how she and Nala will inter­act with each oth­er.

Lonely Thoughts, Cryptography Presentation, Etc.

I feel…alone. I wish I could speak to some­one who could under­stand. I wish I could express my feel­ings the way I wish. What a per­fect time to write.

I’ve been work­ing on my graph­ics project all day. I have almost every­thing done now, with the cells co-ordi­nat­ing their move­ments in a 3D Game of Life dance. They grow and shrink as the rules dic­tate, and although I have some bugs to iron out, and some bells and whis­tles to add, it should­n’t take too long.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion went alright. We did­n’t quite for­mal­ly rehearse, so I spoke for 15 out of the 20 min­utes allo­cat­ed to us, when three of us had speak­ing to do. We were fair­ly rushed at the end, but I think that we got our points through well. I felt that I did a great job at open­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, and at explain­ing my part. Mike, Pat, Iain, and I went to get loaded before the pre­sen­ta­tion, but unfor­tu­nate­ly, the shock of the sit­u­a­tion sobered me up rather effi­cient­ly. After all, it was the first pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve had to do through all of uni­ver­si­ty.

I feel bet­ter after play­ing a few games with Darren. Somehow we made it under the 300th mark, with a 55–7 record at lev­el 14. I believe the height of my addic­tion was most evi­dent when I was watch­ing a movie where a man gets trapped in a bath­room by some tri­ad mem­bers, and the first thing that I thought of was the item box, and town por­tal­ing to a safe loca­tion.

I might going to the Dominican Republic when school ends.

I’ve lis­tened to some of the Tool songs off of the strings trib­ute album, and they’re not very good. The strings are great­ly lack­ing in ener­gy, and some­times bare lit­tle resem­blance to the songs they’re pay­ing homage to. One can tell that the com­pos­er is inspired by Tool com­pos­ings, but the instru­men­tal­ists are insipid in their per­for­mance.

The Honest Lawyer yes­ter­day was relax­ing and frus­trat­ing at the same time. I nev­er I had a chance to real­ly savour the fries this time though, since I felt so guilty about munch­ing on Wheaties’ last time. All in all though, I think I’d rather not have gone.

I’ve always thought that Beth Gibbons had an amaz­ing­ly attrac­tive qual­i­ty to her, not only from the dis­tinc­tive tim­bre of her voice, but also from the grace and gen­tle­ness of her fig­ure cap­tured in her pho­tographs. I’m try­ing out some of her lat­est side-project work with Rustin Man, and so far the sound has been amus­ing­ly unique, a mix of acoustic gui­tar with bit­ter­sweet melodies.

Occidental Fetish

When I think of the Chinese cul­ture, a very spe­cif­ic image comes into my head, of a father dom­i­nat­ed fam­i­ly, par­ents who don’t know their chil­dren, and closed-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als.

I think my upbring­ing has exposed me to such a one-sided aspect of Chinese life. Almost every Chinese fam­i­ly I’ve met is like this. It would­n’t be so bad if I saw the kids as grow­ing up and sur­pass­ing such lim­it­ed indi­vid­u­al­ism. And yet most of the Chinese peo­ple my age just seem to be falling into the same child­ish mind­set, a prod­uct of parental (mis)guidance, in my hum­ble opin­ion.

It almost makes me sick.

When I read about Chinese his­to­ry, I’m fas­ci­nat­ed about how wis­dom is held in such rev­er­ence, and how schol­ars are so respect­ed. The same virtues seem to hold for Chinese peo­ple today, except that they don’t tru­ly under­stand why aca­d­e­mics are impor­tant, or why one should learn an instru­ment.

I wish I did­n’t have such a lim­it­ed view of a cul­ture with such great his­to­ry. I wish I could be exposed to an amaz­ing Chinese fam­i­ly. I wish some­thing could change my view.

All of this has cre­at­ed such a dis­taste of Asian look­ing girls in me. It’s as if my mind makes an unfair asso­ci­a­tion.

I’m stuck.